Basketball
Basketball has always been a huge part of my life, both as an avid fan and a childhood player. Which means that the idea and experience of having a coach has been instilled in me at quite a young age. My coach had been a star player at his college and although his physique seemed to suffer the consequences of age by the time I got to him, his talent for basketball shone through whenever he was showing us on his whiteboard of plays and practices we would run.
Coaches play an important role in many children’s lives as learning a new skill or taking part in a hobby is standard practice for kids. However, why have we given the emphasis on hiring a coach only for children? As an adult, I still want to gain new skills and still have goals I am trying to achieve, so why should I not look into hiring myself a coach to get there?
Well, the answer is simple, I should hire a coach, and well, you should too and to simplify why we still need coaches in our lives here is the brief.
To Guide You
I became a better player because of my basketball coach. He knew exactly how to guide me to improvement because he had done it himself at my age. He understood my weak spots and my strengths and was able to use that to help plan and guide me. Coaches have experience in their fields and can serve as your compass to make sure you are staying on your track. They know the beginnings, the middles, and the end results towards a certain goal because they’ve been down the path prior and have helped several others get there before you as well.
We need this type of guidance because life can get complicated or can send us new opportunities and coaches are there to check up on us to make sure that even with distraction we are still working towards our goal.
To keep you accountable
“Yael you missed another rebound, don’t let that happen again..” my coach frequently belled out during practices. I was a high jumper and my coach saw that from the beginning so he trained me to be the best defender on our team. If I didn’t make a rebound, he often knew why and held me accountable. Not wanting to disappoint him, and myself, as the best defender on the team, this accountability only encouraged me to improve and not miss those rebounds.
This is probably the most important reason. Coaches are there to hold us accountable for our mistakes so that we learn and practice to overcome them. Self-discipline is hard to achieve and anyway, we aren’t always reliable to narrate our lives. That’s why hiring a coach can help us with control as they serve as someone you are now accountable for. When we err, we are forced to face them and any tough conversations that go along with that. This especially helps when we delay our tasks because coaches will want to know why we’re procrastinating and when the reason fails them, we feel guilty.
To Keep you motivated
Feeling guilty towards a coach or person you hired isn’t a bad sort of guilt. It’s the guilt that makes you want to be better and coaches are there for that guilt when we slack off but also to motivate before we get to the next step. Coaches see the big picture more than us because they’ve been hired to lead us down the full road. Because they know the good that is coming, whether it be the acquiring of a new skill, overcoming personal obstacles and bad habits or as we’re starting a new career venture, coaches will only motivate us to get there.
Sometimes the coach themselves serves as a visual motivation; Health coaches have the healthy bodies we seek, business coaches are examples of future success.
Needless to say, those pep talks before a big game always helped me to stay motivated and try to do my best to help my team win (and get those rebounds)
To invest in yourself
When you hire a coach, you are investing time and money in a real way to make sure you accomplish your goals. This means you are investing in yourself which is the best type of investment because you are adding something valuable to who you are. There are only good outcomes to such an investment.
I won’t lie, I haven’t hired a coach myself, but it’s something I won’t pass along when the need and the right time comes. Hiring a coach essentially means you believe and trust in yourself and that’s why you are taking such a productive leap. Childhood definitely gets some aspects of life right on the ball and hiring yourself a coach to guide you, keep you accountable and motivated is a powerful and great decision to bring into any aspect of your life to reach any type of goal. You will definitely be thanking yourself and your coach in the future.
Oh and thanks to my childhood basketball coach, I am still playing basketball weekly and yes, I am still racing to get those rebounds.